Former Gov. John Engler came back to the state Capitol the same day he was named as the interim President of Michigan State University amidst a sex abuse scandal that has rocked the East Lansing campus.
Kathleen Gray/Detroit Free rpess

The plea deal former Michigan State basketball player Travis Walton received in a 2010 assault and battery case was not uncommon, according to the East Lansing city attorney and his former assistant who signed off on the lesser charges.

David Meyers, the assistant city attorney who worked the Walton case, is not pleased with his portrayal in an ESPN story from last month that detailed a number of incidents over the past decade of violence against women by former MSU men’s basketball and football players.

In a statement to the Free Press, Meyers continued to defend himself against insinuations that he went against City of East Lansing protocol by recommending lessening Walton’s charges to a littering fine.

“I detest that a municipal case, that was resolved (eight) years ago in the normal manner, has been made into a sideshow,” Meyers wrote.

A story by ESPN’s Paula Lavigne published Jan. 26 detailed two alleged incidents involving Walton, the first of which occurred at Dublin Square bar in East Lansing on Jan. 16, 2010. ESPN interviewed the alleged victim in that case, Ashley Thompson, who said Walton hit her and gave her a concussion. Walton, 30, denied the assault and battery allegations in a Jan. 30 statement last month.

Walton’s plea agreement on April 21, 2010, reduced his penalty to a $500 littering fine, according to East Lansing 54B District Court records. Meyers wrote that city attorney Thomas Yeadon approved the plea agreement.

Yeadon told the Free Press those type of agreements are not out of the ordinary in East Lansing.

“They’re extremely common,” said Yeadon, who took over as city attorney in 2012 after serving 27 years as assistant city attorney. “Most of our cases are dealt down to littering. We look at assault cases a little more closely than we would a run-of-the-mill disorderly conduct. Oftentimes in assault cases, there are differing versions of who did what to whom. But that’s still a fairly common plea agreement."

Read Meyers' full statement:

Meyers said he totaled all closed assault and battery cases in East Lansing based on public records from 2014-17 earlier this month. Of the 52 he found, many of which do not deal with MSU athletes, 34 ended in a “conditional civil infraction.”

The Free Press has not yet inspected the documents Meyers referenced.

Most of the 34 cases, Meyers said, were pleaded down to a littering fine, similar to Walton's case. Eight resulted in guilty or no-contest pleas, either alone or as part of an agreement; five were dismissed outright; four were dismissed as part of another plea deal; and one resulted in a finding of guilt by jury trial.

One of those cases, which involved ex-MSU football player Demetrius Cooper allegedly spitting in the face of an East Lansing Parking and Code Enforcement officer in November 2016, was pleaded to a littering fine based on conditional terms of his agreement. That deal was reached in February 2017, which was two months after Meyers left his position with the city and entered into private practice.

Thompson, who told ESPN she was “heartbroken” and “livid” that Walton’s case was reduced to a littering infraction, received reduced charges from a similar plea deal in 2009, according to 54B court records. A judge dismissed her charges of operating while intoxicated and misdemeanor marijuana possession and instead gave her a traffic citation for improper lane use and fines, which were settled in August 2010.

John Fraser, an attorney for Grewal Law in Okemos, said East Lansing’s handling of the cases was consistent with other college towns in the state, such as Ann Arbor and Mount Pleasant. Fraser, who has handled cases in both of those towns, said a “conditional dismissal to a civil infraction” is not something limited to athletes.

“The resolution Mr. Walton got is pretty similar to a lot of cases that I’ve handled there,” Fraser said. “I see this type of agreement happen all the time. And really the whole idea is a public policy argument. These are young people. For most of these things, it’s usually an issue of proof on some of these offenses. Usually, everybody is drunk, so a trial is a crapshoot.

“So this is a way to have some sort of oversight over the person and try to do justice at the end of the day.”

Meyers, who was an East Lansing’s assistant city attorney from 2006-16, received his juris doctorate from MSU College of Law in 2005 and his undergraduate degree from Loyola University in Chicago. He said in a previous statement to the Free Press that ESPN’s report about his role in the Walton case was “false allegations and misleading insinuations” and said he has never spoken to MSU basketball coach Tom Izzo, football coach Mark Dantonio or anyone In the university’s administration about their players’ legal issues.

“The fact that I’m involved in any of this is just mind-boggling to me,” Meyers wrote.

The ESPN story also accused Walton and two other unnamed players from MSU’s 2010 Final Four team of committing a sexual assault in April 2010. Walton denied those allegations but admitted he knew the unnamed woman and had a relationship with her. Documents given to ESPN claim the woman and her family brought her claims to then-MSU athletic director Mark Hollis.

In the ESPN story, Hollis and Alan Haller, MSU’s current senior associate athletic director/athletic department chief of staff, reportedly met with MSU basketball coaches and players to discuss the allegations “several weeks” after they were made. No police report was filed and no one reported the alleged assault to the Title IX office, according to ESPN.

Hollis abruptly announced his retirement Jan. 26, about two hours before the ESPN article published. That same day, Walton was placed on leave from his coaching position with the Los Angeles Clippers’ Gatorade League affiliate in Ontario, California.

Walton, who played for MSU from 2005-09, was an undergraduate student assistant for Izzo in early 2010 before signing a professional contract to play overseas.